Final flag drops on driving career

When Mark Webber went into his final driver’s briefing for last weekend’s season-ending, six-hour World Endurance Championship sports car race in Bahrain, he received a standing ovation from his peers.

The affable Australian wasn’t expecting it, but it was a measure of the huge respect fellow drivers felt for his outstanding career that started in Karting in 1991 and was ending with this race.

Webber finished third in the race in his Porsche Hybrid, and drove the last leg to the chequered flag.

During an eleven-year Formula One career, Webber contested 215 races scoring nine wins, 42 podiums and 13 pole positions and finished third in the driver’s championship in 2010, 2011 and 2013.

In three years in the WEC for Porsche, he scored eight wins,15 podiums and eight pole positions and finished second in the 2015 Le Mans 24-hour race and won the WEC driver’s title.